Reports: British Ex-Rapper ID'd as Jihadist Who Beheaded Foley

A 23-year-old British former rapper was identified on Saturday by British security officials as the man suspected of beheading American journalist James Foley, according to news reports.

Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, who is said to be known by Islamic State members as "Jihadi John" because of his British accent, was identified by unnamed British intelligence sources as the masked terrorist standing by Foley in a video ISIS posted on the Internet of the execution, The Sunday Times of London reports.

Prior to release of the Foley death video, Bary had posted a photo of himself on Twitter holding a severed head.

He was identified by the British Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, the Times reports, citing sources it did not identify.

Bary, whose music has been played on BBC radio, left his family's home in West London last year to go to Syria, The Telegraph reports. He had a similar build and skin tone as the jihadist in the video, British authorities said.

According to the Evening Standard, Bary is the son of high-profile al-Qaida terror suspect Adel Abdul Bary, the Egyptian militant who was extradited to the United States in 2012 over allegations that he masterminded the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Foley, 40, of Rochester, N.H., was kidnapped on Nov. 22, 2012, in northern Syria. He had earlier been kidnapped and released in Libya.

The British intelligence agencies and police estimate that up to 20 extremists from the U.K. are now traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS every month, the Times reports.

The rate has risen since ISIS declared a "caliphate" in the lands it has seized in Iraq and Syria eight weeks ago, according to the Times.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Sunday that the killing of Foley by a man speaking with an English accent was an "utter betrayal of our country".

"It is horrifying to think that the perpetrator of this heinous act could have been brought up in Britain," Hammond wrote in an article published in the Sunday Times.

"It is an utter betrayal of our country, our values and everything the British people stand for."

Hammond also warned that IS was "turning a swathe of Iraq and Syria into a terrorist state as a base for launching attacks on the West."